Wikifactory completes its end-to-end supply chain ecosystem with the launch of its Collaborative Manufacturing Marketplace

The launch of Wikifactory’s new Collaborative Manufacturing Marketplace means users can now bring their ideas to market from beginning to end all within the Wikifactory platform

Wikifactory, an online platform for collaboratively creating physical products, announced last week the launch of its new quality-assured Collaborative Manufacturing Marketplace. The new tool completes Wikifactory’s ecosystem of products, which means startups, engineers, designers and manufacturers now benefit from a completely automated and secure production lifecycle.

Once designers have created, shared, reviewed and collaborated on a product design, the new Collaborative Manufacturing Marketplace system offers an online solution for them to prototype and produce hardware, anywhere in the world. It provides online quotes, global delivery, and faster production times for CNC machining, sheet metal, 3D printing, and injection moulding with 150+ materials and presets via both global and local manufacturers.

For product designers and companies, achieving first time yield is time-consuming and complicated due to the number of manufacturers available to them. To make the process easier and help users bring their product to market faster, Wikifactory has hand-picked the world’s best manufacturers so that hardware developers can gain access to every required part for their design.  

This new tool is the final step in building a complete production ecosystem and comes just a few months after Wikifactory launched CAD Rooms, which remedies the complicated process of reviewing CAD files and then sharing or receiving feedback via emails with annotated screenshots. Through CAD Rooms, users can securely view, share and collaborate on CAD files in a real-time environment that makes collaboration around 3D files easy, with chat and annotation features.

More than 130,000 product developers, from over 190 countries, are already using the Wikifactory platform to build products in robotics, electric vehicles, drones, agri-tech, sustainable energy appliances, lab equipment, 3D printers, smart furniture and biotech fashion materials, as well as medical devices. Now, without leaving the platform, users can:

• Request a quote: The user will simply need to upload the parts they require to configure their quote request within minutes 
• Get a quote within 24 hours: Wikifactory will evaluate the RFQ and send it to the best manufacturers for the individual’s needs and they will receive a quote within 24 hours. 
• Assess manufacturers: Once the user has received the quotes, they can access the manufacturers based on the fabrication services they offer, materials they work with, industries they work for, and certificates they hold.
• Receive the parts straight to their doorstep: Once the order has been placed and a quality inspection has been conducted, the manufacturer sends the part to the user. 

Wikifactory enables users from across the globe to collaborate, prototype and produce hardware solutions in real-time that solve real world problems. The company recently announced news that it secured $2.5M in Pre-Series A funding from current shareholders and new investors, bringing its total to nearly $8 million. The investment has enabled Wikifactory to further develop and officially launch the Collaborative Manufacturing Marketplace.

Joel Tortolero, CEO, Wikifactory, said: “We are always looking for ways to make the manufacturing process as sustainable and cost-effective as possible. The launch of our Collaborative Manufacturing Marketplace is the final piece in our development of an end-to-end production lifecycle and demonstrates Wikifactory’s efforts in revolutionising the world’s current fragile supply chain.

“By enabling product designers to iterate an idea and take it right through to production with local manufacturers, the platform is not only helping to cut carbon emissions associated with global deliveries, but cutting costs associated with product development and speeding up the process. The marketplace allows users to know they’re finding the best parts at the most competitive price, without costing the planet. The system soft-launched earlier this year in order to test the user experience and ensure we were providing a service that will go above and beyond the product designer’s needs.

“Wikifactory is creating a market network to assist designers and businesses in developing long-term reputation profiles and providing SaaS workflow tools to support actions related to longer-term product development initiatives – not just ‘rapid, match-made transactions’.”